


Feel the Beating of Your Heartache Drum

by marauders_groupie



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Childhood Friends, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 14:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8581372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marauders_groupie/pseuds/marauders_groupie
Summary: Bellamy is seven when he feels his soulmate for the first time. He is also seven when he meets Clarke Griffin. And for the next eleven years, nothing makes sense about the person he is supposed to love, his soulmate. But loving Clarke Griffin feels pretty right.   Bellarke Soulmates AU where they feel each other's pain.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know that at this point you are probably wondering: "Why the hell is she still writing soulmate stories?" I know. I know that it's impossible to put a unique twist on every single one of them and so many of mine have come back to the two of them being childhood best friends. But do you know why I write them? I write them because I am a hopeless romantic with trust issues, and to me, there is nothing more beautiful than the kind of love that endures childhood and weird adolescent phases and distance counted in thousands of miles. I write them because I love the choice - yes, the universe thinks this person is right for you, but you have the final say. I write them because I love them so, so much - I love the concept, the idea, I love them because they admit to magic existing. 
> 
> So if you love them too, thank you, thank you for sticking with me and my stories. I hope you enjoy this one because it happened in a whirlwind, just like [What We Do to Each Other](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6044998), and it felt right from the start.  
> Thank you [Natalia](http://toofunnytohear.tumblr.com) for sending me this prompt! God, it was such an amazing ride. <3
> 
> The title is from Robin Schulz - Headlights, and if you want to listen to it while reading, please do. 
> 
> Enjoy!

When Bellamy is seven, he feels his soulmate for the first time.

Octavia is too busy crying, his mother isn't there, and he nearly misses it, how his knee starts stinging out of nowhere, light pain that almost feels like a butterfly kiss.

He doesn't know it then because soulmates are rare and most people are just happy to find someone they can call their own, with or without the universe's interference.

But Bellamy reads a lot, so much that the old Miss Sinclair told him that he's going to read his weight in books, and therefore, he _knows_ things. 

He knows about soulmates and how no science could ever explain them and by the time the second wave of pain comes, he is pressing his lips sealed. Even though there are tears in the corners of his eyes, he is happy.

Yes, indeed, Bellamy Blake is a very, very happy child.

 

*

 

With time, he feels more pain. Sometimes his ankle hurts and he doesn't know why, but that is alright, because when he turns fifteen - his heart hurts.

Something inside him feels very hollow and achy, like a web of tiny spiders climbing all over his body, and he'd like to get rid of his skin but he can't, not really.

It's the heart that's the problem.

Before, it was scrapes and bruises that left him tracing invisible patterns on his skin, wondering what his soulmate was up to.

He didn't know who they are, still doesn't know, and the fact that he likes kissing Murphy and Roma equal amount doesn't help narrow it down.

"It's not like it'd help anyway," Murphy tells him one day when they're hiding under the bleachers and drinking the beer Murphy managed to steal from his mom.

They are fifteen and Bellamy used to read to understand the world but now he doesn't need to. Now he knows why the world is cruel and turns soft corners like John Murphy's to razor-sharp edges Bellamy always cuts his lips on. 

"What do you mean?"

Murphy shrugs like he doesn't give a shit. That's what they have in common. They _so_ give a shit. They give _so many_ shits. 

"They can be platonic, too."

"Well, fuck."

At least that makes the other boy laugh, a deep sound that reminds Bellamy of the rumble of the thunder when electric clouds coil above the plains.

One day, he's going to run away from the town where nothing ever happens.

"I felt mine yesterday," Murphy admits after a long while. He motions towards his eye, makes a grimace. "Poked herself in the eye with mascara."

"Ouch."

Murphy has always known that it's a she and when he kissed Bellamy despite that, Bellamy asked him why.

"Because you are pretty and my soulmate isn't going to save me."

In a way, it makes Bellamy both hope and wonder, have elaborate conversations with his soulmate inside his mind.

_Where are you?_

_How long do I have to wait?_

_Why are you in so much pain?_

_Why can't I help?_

_Does it hurt when I'm hurting, too, or is that pain just inside my head?_

 

I'm never going to meet you, am I?

 

*

 

Bellamy is very tired when he is ten. Octavia is three, his mom just got a job and the winter leaves them with a shitty tree and barely enough food.

"Be-lla."

He ignores her wails because he has homework to do and if it's universal knowledge that children at ten shouldn't be so deeply aware of how shitty their lives are, well, no one thought to mention that to Bellamy.

Instead, he keeps reading and Octavia keeps demanding. 

Finally, they come to an agreement. "Fine, O. I'll read you a story, how about that? Will you be quiet then?"

She nods like she understands what he's saying and Bellamy rolls his eyes, fond. She's got chubby cheeks, a fluffy bunny onesie and Bellamy regrets nothing.

His sister, his responsibility.

So he starts off reading her The Odyssey, having gone through the Iliad with her already (there are precisely five books in the Blake household: The Iliad, The Odyssey, the first Harry Potter book and two cookbooks no one uses; "Books are just dead money, Bellamy," his mother says and he listens. They need that money for the electricity bill anyway). 

Somewhere along the way, he looks at his baby sister - _Octavia_ \- and thinks about the woman he named her after. He doesn't want her to be like Penelope, waiting around to be saved.

No.

Octavia can definitely save herself.

And so he spins a new story out of the old one, cuts himself off to continue with how Penelope had beat all the suitors and left to find her peace.

"She sailed and sailed, all around Greece. Through storms and hurricane rain. Penelope was not looking for a savior, O. Penelope knew she could save herself."

 

Octavia drools and he takes it as a yes when she claps her tiny hands. "Moa!"

"More? You'd like more?"

So he tells her more and wonders if his soulmate feels his joy and his pride, too. Not just his pain.

 

*

 

Twelve and Bellamy is pushed into the dirt in the playground. His soulmate's breath stutters in their lungs somewhere out there.

"Thought you were smart, huh, Blake?" Dax is taller than him and stronger than him. 

But Bellamy is smarter. Also, more reckless, which makes him spit out the sand and croak, "It's not harder to be smarter than you, Dax. You think fish have wings."

He gets a beating for that but he's grinning into the blood and the dirt when Clarke Griffin finds him.

"Again, Bellamy?"

He honestly doesn't know why she's so kind to him, always has been, when he was the type that couldn't make friends. But she still offers him a hand and he takes it, pulls himself up.

There is something both scary and exciting about how different they are - his tan skin, hers pale, her golden hair, his the color of the curb on which he often ends up. Her pristine clothes and his tattered jeans.

But she smiles at him, a little exasperated, and says, "You shouldn't taunt Dax."

Everyone says that she is a princess and she sure talks like one but every now and then, she'll come up to him in the hallway and recommend a book. No matter how new it is, by the end of the week, Bellamy will have it in his hands.

(His heart hurts just a little when he sees the inscriptions. _To our dear Clarke, may your mind always roam free. Love, mom and dad._  
He closes the book, opens it again. She still chose to share it with him.)

And they aren't even friends - they are _not_. Bellamy doesn't have any and he is alright with that. During recess and lunch breaks, he'd rather read - he can't really do it at home, not with Octavia and mom. 

"Not my fault he's stupid," Bellamy mutters, averting his gaze towards his backpack. His heart stops when he sees the book Clarke had lent him - The Inkheart - lying down in the dirt, the zipper of his bag broken. 

For a second, he says nothing, and then he rushes forward so fast he trips on his feet and ends up in the dirt again.

The book looks _broken_ , like someone had taken it and decided to devoid it of everything that made it what it was.

Bellamy can relate.

Tears are welling in his eyes when he looks back at Clarke and sees her just standing there, lips slightly parted and her right hand rubbing at her left palm absent-mindedly.

Then she shakes out of it and offers him a soft smile. "It's alright, Bellamy. It's not your fault."

 

He shakes his head, eyes fixed on the book like he can fix it, like he can make the gold letters look royal again - not just pathetic. "No, I shouldn't have taunted Dax, this wouldn't have happened. It _is_ my fault and I am so, so sorry -"

"Bell." His head snaps up, sees her starting to kneel next to him. Her white jeans will get dirty but it doesn't look like she cares. "It's alright. I've been meaning to tell you - if you want to, you can keep it. It - it might be nice."

She tucks a stray curl behind her ear and she has a lot of those, like her head is a wild creature that obeys no one and Clarke is just going with it. 

"I'll buy you a new one."

He can't do it and Clarke knows it, too, but she still pretends like she doesn't. Silently, he's grateful for that. "No, it’s - I'm actually moving away with my parents, so."

They are not friends but Bellamy still feels crestfallen, like the June sky has gone a little paler, a little colder after Clarke said that.

"So if you want to have something to remember me by, I'd love that to be this book."

Bellamy would love that he doesn't have to have something to remember her by. He'd love it if she could just stay and this time they could be friends and he'd get older and make money to buy books he'd lend to her and -

"Okay."

Clarke's eyebrows shoot up but she gets her bearings soon enough, nods. "Okay."

"When are you leaving?"

"Next week."

Bellamy takes it like a champ, thanks her for the book again. Her dad takes all of her friends out for milkshakes and Bellamy is, incredibly, among them. Clarke's dad is a real dad, he notices, one of those from the TV shows like the Full House, who wear jeans and make jokes and he pets Clarke's head, says, "I love you, kiddo."

It makes Bellamy feel strangely lonely because he's never even met his dad but he misses him in a way that puts an empty space in his ribcage, makes him soak in the interaction between Clarke and her dad.

How she rolls her eyes and Jake Griffin doesn't seem to mind at all.

How it's that love she's felt that makes her stand up on her toes and peck Bellamy's cheek at the end of the night, say, "I'll miss you so much, Bellamy Blake."

How it's the exact _lack_ of that love that makes Bellamy flush and stutter into - "I wish we were friends."

"Next time, I promise. I'll even make you, if I have to."

And it's that love that Clarke grew up into that has him clutching The Inkheart with its madly fantastical tales to his chest as he waves her goodbye, her face pressed to the window of her dad's Rover. 

Maybe if things had been different, he would have replied to her question of "What's your name?" with one of his own, that day when they were seven and she was the new kid appearing in class with braids and in a pearly pink dress.

But instead, here they are.

 

And judging by the searing pain he feels in his chest, so full where it was once so empty and aching, Bellamy thinks that yes, at least his soulmate knows what he feels like.

 

*

 

Fourteen and Bellamy misses Clarke. She lives in California now and the last time he talked to Wells, the other boy told him - 

"She's really happy there."

"Good, I'm glad."

And he is glad because despite not having seen her for well over a year, she is the kind of person you don't forget. 

So when he misses Clarke (although she doesn't miss him - the people Bellamy's met never do), he reads.

He devours the stories they used to talk about, once bashful and now he is nothing but brave. If he could, he'd tell her why he likes Harry Potter and why he wants to be like Ginny Weasley - believe that anything is possible if you've got enough nerve.

He'd tell her that he likes Klaus out of all the Baudelaires the best because Violet is a genius and Sunny's teeth are sharp, but all Klaus has are books - and they are enough to save him.

So Bellamy lets Clarke's stories save him, finds new ones, spends all his free time in the library and soaks up the worlds that are so unlike his own.

Sometimes, his soulmate reminds him that they are still there, a sting in passing or a papercut he'd whisper "Fuck you" at, but he doesn't know them and really, he doesn't expect a lot.

There are books about soulmates, too, people who save each other but Bellamy takes a page out of his own - he has to save himself.

And for a while, it's alright.

For a while, he doesn't feel empty and lacking.

For a while, he is more than a boy with second-hand clothes, messy hair, stitched up backpack.

He is more than his mother realizing that his eyesight has gotten bad and cursing his damn books for making her spend the money she doesn't have.

Bellamy doesn't blame her because life hasn't been easy for her but a very important piece of magic he supposes every child holds between their ribs is chipped away, and suddenly he is _nothing_ more than his crooked glasses and a brain full of stories he'll never get to experience.

 

*

 

Sixteen and he sees Clarke again. 

He's at a party, the last of the finals behind him. These days he doesn't even talk to Murphy much. These days he tries to get his life in order because he can't stay in this shitty town forever.

 

And Clarke whirls into his life like a hurricane, nothing but a flash of gold in the corner of his vision as she speeds past him and reaches for Finn Collins.

"Haven't you heard?" Miller, the theatre geek he hangs out most with these days, snickers. "Collins two-timed them."

And they are quite a pair. He knows Raven; the brilliant physicist who spends her days working in her aunt's workshop.

And of course - he could never unknow Clarke. She looks different - taller, fuller, emptier at the same time. Like she lost a lot and became a lot. 

But there is no mistaking the ice in her eyes when she says Finn is dead to her, announces it like a royal decree, Raven at her side.

"So yeah, that's what he did during his semester in California," Miller finishes, unaware that Bellamy hasn't been listening ever since Clarke's lower lip started trembling.

So he crosses the room, makes his way through the throng of sweaty bodies, and gently slides an arm around her waist.

It takes her a moment to realize who he is, her body tensing up, and then she sags into his touch, follows him upstairs with sheer relief in her eyes.

The bare strip of her skin around her belly is warm, and his heart flips in his chest, both their pulses racing. It's almost incredible, how he can see her after four years and it's like nothing changed.

She's still the best friend he's ever had.

When they are in the bathroom, she takes a seat on the toilet and Bellamy kneels at her feet, takes her hands into his.

"Hi, Clarke. What's up, huh?"

Her eyes are wide before tears well up in them and she throws herself into his arms, muttering nonsense into his shoulder as Bellamy listens, rubs her back and tries to do what he couldn't before.

Be her friend.

Finally, she presses out, "I hate it, God, Bellamy, I hate it. My dad died, my mom won't even talk to me, and I need a friend. Fuck, I missed you so much."

It's back to crying, this time anger and sadness and happiness, Bellamy tucking the well-known kind of unruly curl behind her ear, Clarke hugging him so tightly that it feels like she'll break his ribs.

Four years and it's different but it's the same. 

"You wear glasses now," she notices when they're both sitting in the bathtub. Someone tried to come in and they shouted "Fuck off" in unison, collapsed into a heap of giggles right after.

Bellamy hums, traces the arrow tattoo on her ankle absent-mindedly. "I couldn't stop reading. My mom threw a shit fit when she realized I had to get glasses because of my bookish predisposition."

"And I can't believe you used to make fun of _me_ for being pretentious."

Bellamy grins. "Oh, I'm pretentious enough now."

"So, how have you been?"

He wants to tell her everything, about his soulmate and about his mom and about Octavia and about the life he has led and the thoughts he has thought because of her. 

But in the end he just says, "I might study history."

Because that's his favorite. He likes the golden parts that fall through the cracks, bits of myth infused with reality, straddling that border which makes humans seem like gods.

He likes the stories.

He likes that, for a glittering second in the universe, they are _real_.

And then Clarke laughs, a high and noble sound, smiles at him with crinkled eyes. "God, I was wondering what'd become of you, Bellamy."

"And what's the verdict?"

Nothing could prepare him for the look of (unwarranted) pride and fondness painted across her features, how she looks like the type that builds walls higher than her head (just like him) and now she's bringing them down for him. 

"You did good."

Later on, he makes her tell him about going to museums and using art to cope with her dad's death. She used to sneak crayons into their math classes but now she seems to live and breathe in color.

"I suppose no one can shame me for being an emo artsy kid if I say that's who I am, right?"

And there's that pull again, like a string is connecting them, and soon enough she is in Bellamy's arms, his smile pressed into the top of her head, two kids like they used to be.

"I just hope we get to be happy," she says when the dawn is breaking. This wasn't planned, a trip back home, and she needs to go back to California on the same day.

Bellamy nods, holds her tighter because he might not get the chance again. "Me, too, Clarke. Me, too."

 

*

 

"Happy birthday, you insufferable nerd!"

It's 1am in California and Clarke is setting off firecrackers on the other side of the screen for him. She has this ridiculous part hat installed on top of her (now) chopped curls ("It's the bisexual haircut, Bellamy. Come on, don't you know anything about what kids these days do?") and it makes him feel high with joy.

Her dog is scared shitless, though, and for a second he just watches the two of them run around her room, to finally settle in the chair.

"So, happy birthday," she says, a little breathless. Her corgi, Chip, is waving her tail a hundred miles per minute. 

Bellamy smiles at the sight of two of them and the fondness makes his heart swell. His soulmate could be dying and he wouldn't feel it, he loves Clarke so much.

"Thank you, Clarke." Chip lets out a protesting bark. "And Chip, of course."

"So, seventeen, huh? It's a big deal."

And it might be. He's working two jobs, taking more AP classes than he needs, going to school and making sure that Octavia is taken care of, but -

It finally feels like he's doing something good with his life. 

 

"It's gonna be good." He leans back in the chair, laces his fingertips together behind his head. The neighborhood is quiet, Clarke's voice washing over him like waves. 

They often do this, whenever they can - some nights, they even fall asleep like this, wake up in the morning in giggles like a pair of teens sneaking out on a school night.

Neither of them have ever been very typical but at least they've got this.

"I'm glad you're happy, Bellamy. I am."

It's the last thing he hears before he flips into a dream, the kind that is all colors and people, their faces alive with pure kindness. His soulmates' dreams. They always were better at believing that people can be good.

 

*

 

*crown emoji*: a grown man came to buy a princess costume in his own size today!!!!

Bellamy: Was it Mulan?

*crown emoji*: elsa, sorry. 

Bellamy: Fuck.

*crown emoji*: still! he looked all macho, he was so RIPPED, BELL!? AHH!

Bellamy: Fuck gender norms.

*crown emoji*: the world is so gay and i am so happy

 

 

*

 

Bellamy: You ever hate your OCs?

Princess in charge: only every day.

Princess in charge: why? what happened??

Bellamy: They won't do what I tell them to!

Princess in charge: try yelling at them? 

Princess in charge: it helps srsly

Bellamy: Yeah, and that worked out so well for you last time.

* Princess in charge is typing *

Bellamy: Please don't say "The title of your sex tape"

Princess in charge: THE TITLE OF YOUR SEX TAPE

Princess in charge: HA! 

 

*  

 

Clarke is a double-texter. She will devour anything Van Gogh-related and has no problem admitting that it is very stereotypical of her. The first time she calls him in the middle of the night, she is having a panic attack and Bellamy manages to talk her down. When Bellamy tells her about the story he is writing, blushing even though she can't see him, she makes a Pinterest board for the characters. 

When Bellamy is eighteen, he realizes that he is in love with Clarke Griffin.

Soulmates be damned.

 

*

 

Octavia is eleven and seeing her makes Bellamy remember why he'd upturned the Odyssey just so she could grow up into believing in herself.

She paints his nails pink because she can't really go on sleepovers with her friends and talks about wanting to take ballet lessons and karate ones, too.

"I want to be kind and lovely like you, and I want to kick ass like Raven," she deadpans.

He's been hanging out with Raven a lot lately, the two of them and Miller against the world. Well, really, they might be each other's proxy for Clarke but they're not going to say it.

"Because we're adults and we have no feelings," Raven explains, under the hood of a red Corvette. 

Bellamy frowns at where he presumes her head to be. "I feel like that is painfully wrong and will result in therapy one day."

There is a sound of wrench hitting the ground and then Raven slides out from under the car. "Well, you know what they say - drink some coffee and suppress that shit."

"Otherwise you get as pathetic as Bellamy is with Clarke," Miller adds helpfully, feet on the table and Shakespeare's Hamlet in his hand.

"Why are we friends?"

"Nah, Nate's got a point. You need to do something about that."

"And what's with your soulmate anyways, Blake?"

Raven's soulmate was Finn. They grew up together, learned to do everything together, and there's still a tinny raven pendant hanging around her neck, the one he made for her.

But just because someone is your soulmate doesn't mean that they can't hurt you. 

So Raven bites down whatever she had to say and gets back under the car. Metal hitting metal echoes throughout the shop and Bellamy tries to remember the last time he's felt his soulmate.

"I don't know. They're not - they're okay."

But he used to feel them when they would get happy, too, not just when they'd get hurt. It used to be _more_ and a part of him feels like he's being selfish, like he forgot to listen for the person he is _supposed to_ love while he was busy listening to Clarke, who he _loves_.

It's stupid to let himself feel that way, with all these miles that leave him unable to hug her, much less do anything more. Some nights they are tired and their words flow freely. They hurt each other but it's only because they care and it makes Bellamy shatter.

"I wish you were here," Clarke whispers into her dark room, into his ear. She sounds small and tired.

"I miss you, too."

And going down the memory lane leaves them with empty hands, too. Clarke reminds him of how he wouldn't talk to her until she mentioned books. "God, Bell, I swear your eyes went _so_ wide, you were that excited."

He wants to say, _I was a coward_.

But all that comes out is - "Yeah."

So he writes what he can't say, comes up with twenty different ways to say how sorry he is to his soulmate, for having to endure all this pain.

In the end, they just crack. Clarke is exhausted and Bellamy is stressed. His mother hasn't been home for three days and he doesn't want to do this anymore, hope when he knows that it will slip out of his grasp.

"You're the problem!" she shouts at him and anger flares up in his stomach out of nowhere. _Hello, soulmate. What a shitty time to be mine._ "If you could just believe that it's not your fault but no! You _have_ to be a martyr! Saint Bellamy Blake, the protector of anyone who asks!"

"Like you're any better, Clarke! What _don't_ you blame yourself for? Hell, you even found a way to blame yourself for your dad's death!"

He knows he crossed a line there because they don't mention Jake Griffin unless Clarke remembers a really good memory that exists in a bubble untouched by death. 

The screen is crackly and static but he can see the hurt in her eyes when she shakes her head and hangs up the call. "No, I'm done."

His mom comes back home two hours later and tells him she's dying.

 

*

 

In a way, he guesses that he should have known. He's a rabbit chasing the carrot that he can never get. 

When he is 18 years old, his mother dies and it takes Clarke to drag him out of his room and make him open the NYU letter.

The night she came over, the night before the funeral, Miller let her in and Bellamy woke up with her curled around him, her hair in his mouth.

He was hollow then, the gaping hole in his chest expanding after he'd spent the last five days trying to function like a human being. 

And then he saw her, a crease between her eyebrows in place even as she slept, fully clothed. Clarke.

"She flew in last night," Miller told him over breakfast. "I don't know how she even knew what happened."

Bellamy didn't either but he was still grateful that she was there, holding his hand and keeping an arm around Octavia's shoulders all the while, like she's the one who is protecting them now.

 

And she lets him unleash all the ugly on her, the screaming and the crying, the raw grief that feels like a tangible thing within Bellamy. Clarke lets him talk and shout and cry until he is done, until he can't and doesn't want to feel anymore.

"What the fuck am I going to do now?" he asks, desperate, when he realizes that Octavia is eleven and he is eighteen and he can't let her slip through the cracks and grow up unloved in the system.

Myths are the only ones who can survive that.

Children, no matter how brave, can't.

"You're going to open the letter and see if you got in."

She leaves no room for discussion and so he does just that, crosses the kitchen and plants a kiss on Octavia's head while she sleeps. 

Clarke keeps her arms wrapped around his torso while he tears the envelope and finds out that he's been accepted.

It doesn't make him happy. It just makes him start crying again because he's not the only one who matters now - Octavia is more important.

"We'll figure it out," Clarke promises. "We'll figure it out."

And he's not sure who saves his life then - Clarke or his soulmate, but both are the lifelines he clings on to.

 

*

 

Their Brooklyn apartment is a shoebox but it's got a fire escape and thick walls.

"We can't afford this," is what Bellamy says.

"What the fuck," is what Octavia shoots back. She figures that now that she's an orphan, she gets to swear as much as she'd like.

"Will you both stop worrying?" is what Clarke finishes with and helps them unpack.

When Octavia is off to bed in the only real bedroom the apartment has, Bellamy tells Clarke, "You can't just keep giving me gifts."

Clarke raises an eyebrow at him, sitting on the window ledge, one foot and a mug of tea on the fire escape. "What have I ever given to you?"

"The Inkheart. This place."

_The friendship I never asked for but God, I needed it._

And she wrinkles her nose, her hair held up just by a pencil that's probably going to stay in there.

"We're friends, it's - _shut up_."

Bellamy is surprised by the sound of his own laughter, a foreign sound that makes Clarke outright beam at him.

And that - that makes it all spill over. The apartment and Octavia saying "We've made it this far, we'll kick New York's ass, too", the flowers Clarke brought him when she went to get food and how both of them blushed like they were kids again, the fire escape and the city alive beneath their feet.

 

The way yellow light spills across Clarke's face and makes her look raw, the way it puts a crack in his heart and he knows the taste of what he feels now.

It's the dirt he's swallowed before Clarke helped him up. It's the smell of books she used to give him. It's that chocolate milkshake before she left. Salty tears drying on her cheeks when he saw her again. The way she always smells like paint and feels like spring and her heart must be as heavy and as light as his is because he _remembers_ this.

The way she feels - Bellamy knows this. It's muscle memory at this point and it knocks the breath out of his lungs, makes him stumble towards her.

"How long have you known?"

Clarke is confusion and joy and fear and thrill. "I suspected since we were kids. I'd always feel pain and see you on the ground."

"And then my mom died."

"And then your mom died and I knew. God, Bellamy, it was so _wild_ , your sadness. It felt like my heart was going to be split in two."

She talks, running out of breath and out of room on the small fire escape. Bellamy just looks at her, feeling like this is the first time he is really _seeing_ her.

His soulmate.

And the words sound strange on his tongue when he finally pronounces them, tries them out.

"You're my soulmate."

Wrong, and the world is a little off.

"You're my Clarke."

Right. So fucking right.

And it's so right that it makes her smile, eyes full of tears and spreading her arms like she can't believe they've been waiting on each other for so long. 

"Why haven't you told me sooner?"

Clarke smiles. "The time wasn't right, Bellamy. We always got that one part wrong."

He kisses her, presses his lips to hers and this is the silver lining he was looking for, the one good thing in everything that has ever happened to them.

Because he knows what it felt like when her father died, the numbness and then the grief, and she knows that burying his mother was an explosion of its own, and it was hard not to love Clarke, once he has gotten to know her.

She kisses like she fights; all in, no time to turn back now, and Bellamy laughs into it as she deepens the kiss, her hands roaming like she has no intention of letting go of him now that they've found each other.

"Where's the rush?" he asks once they've broken apart, both of them dazed, Clarke's lips red and swollen in a way that makes him proud and high on happiness.

"I missed you, Bellamy, I missed us not loving each other."

"You saying you love me?" he teases but his heart is beating so wildly that his ribs feel like a cage.

And Clarke - the Clarke that is now everything he's ever felt from his soulmate and then some - she nods earnestly. 

"I'm saying that I don't know how _not_ to love you."

He kisses _I love you_ s into her skin and when she's smiling under him on the shaggy carpet they picked together, Bellamy plants butterfly kisses on the scar that remained after she scraped her knee when they were seven, as if quietly telling him,   _hello, I’m your soulmate and I am here_.

"What was that for?" she asks, cupping his cheeks, close enough for their noses to brush. Their bodies are maps of scars, the visible and the unseen. He loves every single one of them because the scars - that's their story.

"I've been wanting to do this ever since I found out you were here."

The tea sits forgotten on the fire escape as they tangle themselves in one another, hundreds of words that were on the tips of their tongues and yet, the time was never right.

It is now, and the tea goes cold while they are busy loving each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Tidbit part? Tidbit part!  
> \- My original title idea for this was "My Hurt is Yours" (as in "My youth is yours") and Natalia laughed, therefore I am obviously witty.  
> \- Also, writer!Bellamy makes an appearance and he will keep doing that because apparently, I love that idea.  
> \- I already said that this fic was written in a semi-high like state but not because I took something but because it felt so right from the start and I couldn't go to sleep until I finished writing it. If you follow me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/lanadelrafaela), then you've seen me tweeting about it excitedly. Fuck, it was like the universe aligned and yeah, you can go hate me now for being so corny.
> 
> If you made it all the way here - thank you! Thank you so much for reading and if you liked it - **please let me know (kudos & comments are my fave, ngl)**. If you didn't like it - please let me know, too. I'd like to know what I could do better, in your opinion, because improvement is my jam. 
> 
> You can come talk to me on [tumblr](http://marauders-groupie.tumblr.com), (twitter obvs), and if you're into intersectional feminism, please check out **[Loud and Alive](http://loudandaliveblog.com)** \- we accept submissions!


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